April 8, 2014

Ten Commandment UPDATE

There hasn't been much movement in the lawsuits regarding the unconstitutional Ten Commandment monuments in New Kensington and Connellsville, as far as I can see.

But please, if I am error about that, let me know.

I wanted to draw your collective attention to this piece I found in the Trib. Looks like our friends in the Thou Shalt Not Move have been busy:

A 15th granite Ten Commandments monument was unveiled on Saturday at Liberty Baptist Church in Uniontown, where the Rev. Ewing Marietta has been leading a battle to keep the monument outside Connellsville Junior High School.

“We finally have our Ten Commandments monument at Liberty Baptist Church,” said Marietta, organizer of the Thou Shall Not Move group, to a crowd of about 200 people. “But we're not going to stop here. We plan to raise enough money to erect 100 monuments.”

The Rev. Alfred Thompson, pastor of St. Paul's AME Church in Uniontown, said Christian denominations need to unite to support the cause and bring attention to the word of God.

But look. They've erected the monument on church grounds. Unless there's a paradigm shift in constitutional law, they're going to loose the fight to keep the monument on school grounds. There's no question that they're free to make a commandment erection on church grounds. It's just when they're looking to use the guv'ment to impose religion (by way of a stone monument at a public school) that they run in conflict with the Constitution.

But that's all a frame work. Let's zip our eyes down the page a few paragraphs:

Marietta told the group that the nation was founded on Christian principles and the Ten Commandments that serve as a guide for the American people and the basis for American laws.

“We have a reason and a purpose to follow the word of God,” Marietta said. “We need to pray for our children and teach them the importance of God's word. We need to bring God back into the schools and our nation.”

Gary Colatch, a member of the Thou Shall Not Move group, said teaching children about Christianity is important because they will be the nation's leaders and its future.

“We need to raise our children and grandchildren to trust in God,” Colatch said. “We were a godly and Christian nation, and we need to return to those principles. God will bless America again if we return to our Christian beliefs and values.”

Before the Ten Commandments monument was unveiled, the group sang “God Bless America.”

Yea, about that song. They do know it was written by someone (Irving Berlin, born Israel Isidore Beilin) who wasn't a Christian, right? And they do know that his family had to escape Imperial Russia because they were the wrong religion, right? The Cossacks reportedly burned the family home to the ground because the Beilins were Jewish. It's a good thing that they found their way to the land of the free, where everyone's faith (or non-faith) is protected.

Perhaps instead of God Bless America, they should have sung this:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.